commerce

The exchange or buying and selling of commodities; especially the exchange of merchandise, on a large scale, between different places or communities; extended trade or traffic.

Noun

  1. The exchange or buying and selling of commodities; especially the exchange of merchandise, on a large scale, between different places or communities; extended trade or traffic.
  2. Social intercourse; the dealings of one person or class in society with another; familiarity.
    • [A]ll libertine diſcourſe, and familiarities vvith vvomen, […] nay even friendſhip it ſelfe […] muſt be vvatched vvith great prudence to be kept ſafe: for vvhich cauſe in ſtead of all theſe perillous commerces of our...
    • Fifteen years of thought, observation, and commerce with the world had made him [Bunyan] wiser. - 1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Bunyan, John”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:
    • Suppose we held our converse not in words, but in music; those who have a bad ear would find themselves cut off from all near commerce, and no better than foreigners in this big world. - 1874–1881, Robert Louis...
  3. Sexual intercourse.
    • carnal commerce
  4. An 18th-century French card game in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade.

Origin

Borrowed from Middle French commerce, from Latin commercium. Doublet of comess.

Forms

commerces

Synonyms

trade traffic dealings intercourse interchange communion communication

Hyponyms

E-commerce e-commerce electronic commerce m-commerce silent commerce social commerce

Derived

anticommerce biocommerce chamber of commerce Commerce City commerce destroyer commerceless commerce raider commerce raiding commerciable commercial conversational commerce cybercommerce ecommerce Incoterm s-commerce s-Commerce telecommerce

Verb

  1. To carry on trade; to traffic.
    • [A]lwaies beware you commerce not with bankrupts, […] - 1599 (first performance), B. I. [i.e., Ben Jonson], The Comicall Satyre of Euery Man out of His Humor. […], London: […] [Adam Islip] for William Holme, […],...
  2. To hold conversation; to communicate.
    • No, sir, he, / Vex'd with a morbid devil in his blood / That veil'd the world with jaundice, hid his face / From all men, and commercing with himself, / He lost the sense that handles daily life— […] - 1842, Alfred...
    • Musicians […] taught the people in angelic harmonies to commerce with heaven. - 1844, John Wilson, Essay on the Genius, and Character of Burns:

Forms

commerces commercing commerced